Exercise – 3 Minutes per Week

NOTE – I talked to my doctor about this and he advised me to quit. This could cause problems exercising as intensively as this is.

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I watched a PBS show called “The Truth about Exercise” by Michael Mosley. It’s research is a bit complicated, but seems to indicate that some people don’t need to do hours in the gym, but rather short bursts of high intensity exercise to achieve better insulin sensitivity numbers. Here’s the program using an exercise bicycle.

Two minutes gentle warm-up

20 seconds – biking as fast and as hard as you can go.

Two minutes slow

20 seconds fast

Two minutes slow

20 seconds flat

It adds up to just one minute of intense exercise. He did this just three times a week for four weeks. When he was tested his insulin sensitivity numbers had increased by 24%.

The other factor they tested for was aerobic fitness. He did not improve in this area and the reason appears to be genetics. According to one study, they tested 1,000 people who had exercised 4 hours a week for 20 weeks. There was a large variability at the end of the time period as to how fit people were at the end of the period. Some 5% of the people showed no improvement at all and another 15% showed little improvement. There is a genetic test they did on Michael and it turned out that he was in this group.

Other notes from the show

He uses only 16 calories per minute running at 6 mph and makes the point that exercise alone is not going to make much difference in losing weight.

After eating a typical high fat breakfast the fat levels in his blood doubled. The next night he went for a long walk and the next day he ate the same high fat breakfast and had another blood test and his fat levels were reduced by a third – just from an easy walk the night before.

Here’s what I’m testing out – starting on Nov. 21st. Ten minutes total exercise on an indoor bike.

1:40 – slow – Resistance 3

20 seconds – Fast – Resistance 13 (note – I went up to 14)

Repeat the two until I reach six minutes.

Note – another study indicated that a lower intensity training over a longer period of time had similar results.